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Not really. Williams calculations are based on cost of goods which is how CPI used to be calculated. The BLS, over time, switched to a cost of living calculation.
Wrong by 180 degrees. BLS explicitly DENIES that the CPI is a cost-of-living index, pointing out that conceptual and definitional issues make construction of such an index all but impossible in any case. The CPI is and always has been a price index with respect to a basket of goods that evolves along with evolving patterns of household consumption. John Williams meanwhile is a publicity seeking troll and his website is completely worthless. No serious person pays any attention to it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyTexan
You see I still buy the same goods each week so I follow Williams. And his numbers is what I see when I shop. My consumer behavior follows Williams, not the BLS. I don't substitute all the time.
LOL! You are one tiny little person stuck off in one tiny little corner of Texas. Even if your personal witness could be trusted -- and it plainly can't -- that testimony would pale in comparison to the data collected by thousands of analysts taking the prices of thousands of goods at thousands of locations all across the country, then running all that data through exhaustive analytical and computational methodologies developed by the best subject matter experts available in this country and around the world. None of whom is John Williams. Or Tyler Durden either for that matter. The level of absolute bunk that sociophobes will swallow can be and often is simply staggering.
Escort Rider: I had BC/BS insurance (supplement) that cost close to $100/month. I still had to pay 20% of doctor bills, hospital bills, tests, etc. Low copays for prescriptions. This year I changed insurances and went with an Advantage plan. Pay $178.50 for the medical and $52.10 for pharmaceutical (had to meet deductible here before seeing any savings) per month. It's not the free ride you have presented.
Wow what was your supplement even covering then? Medicare pays all but 20% of the bills you mentioned, so they paid NOTHING on those? That sounds like a scam for sure! Medicare.gov is where I usually check the cost of plans but their site kept crashing so I tried this https://www.ehealthmedicareplans.com...10/ONEIDA/1/p1 And there were plans that offered benefits very similar to my husband's for zero premium. Your profile said 'central NY so I put in Utica)
Eggs have gone up 40% from that "staged" bird flu thing (totally phony). Just an industry that held off its price increases. Timing tells the whole story.
BTW, it was not unusual in Soviet Russia to systematically destroy mass quantities of agricultural products, for whatever reason, often not even reported. Connect the dots.
Oh, yeah, it's all a great conspiracy to monopolize egg production ...
Also noteworthy that Congress and Senate aren't required to have Obamacare so its no wonder they passed it. It should be a law that anything they pass should apply to them as well.
Since January 1, 2014, most of Congress and most of the staff who work in Congressional offices have obtained their health care coverage through an Obamacare exchange in Washington DC.
And by the way, media overdosing is unhealthful. For example, nobody has "raided" Social Security, elective abortions do not cause cancer, evolution and global warming are real, and Saddam did not have WMD.
Find it interesting that IIRC COLA adjustments were born out of media reports during the 1970's about seniors eating pet food because they couldn't afford better. Given the inflation and stagflation of the period can see how those on SS found their checks not going far.
Fast forward to now and we aren't that far from seeing things become that desperate for some again.
Prior to the institution of SS colas, what a SS recipient initially received was frozen, and by the 1970s there were many retirees attempting to live on SS payments that would have been barely adequate when they retired back in the 1950s. While a higher percentage of workers had pensions back then, those pensions frequently provided < $100 a month, especially for the oldest retirees. Then the OPEC oil embargo in the early 1970s created a monstrous spike in inflation, and inflation remained in the double digits for more than a decade IIRC. It wasn't just media reports that showed retirees suffering severely from inflation; it was every piece of statistical and empirical evidence.
Today's retirees are in no way in the same situation. That's not saying that many retirees are not struggling, just that the situations today and 40 years ago are simply not the same. No COLA because the inflation calculation works out to be close to 0 is a whole lot different from a non-existent COLA mechanism and double digit inflation on every inflation calculator.
YMMV. I too have Medicare primary and a BC/BS policy secondary. I pay a few pennies for some of my prescription drugs, and nothing at all for anything else, including two recent surgeries that were more than $30,000 each.
Then the OPEC oil embargo in the early 1970s created a monstrous spike in inflation, and inflation remained in the double digits for more than a decade IIRC.
Close. The CPI was above 10% for 15 months as the result of the 1973-74 oil crisis and then again for most of 1979-81 as the result of the 1979-80 oil crisis. Things in between were no picnic for those on a fixed income either. Inflation after all is just the reverse of the "magic of compounding".
Quote:
Originally Posted by Linda_d
Today's retirees are in no way in the same situation. That's not saying that many retirees are not struggling, just that the situations today and 40 years ago are simply not the same. No COLA because the inflation calculation works out to be close to 0 is a whole lot different from a non-existent COLA mechanism and double digit inflation on every inflation calculator.
Exactly. It's a while different ballpark today. There were no SS COLA increases in 2010 or 2011 either though, in part because of the large 2009 COLA that had chiefly resulted from manipulated oil futures markets pushing pump prices for gasoline above $4 a gallon in the summer of 2008. They were back down to $1.50 by December, but the COLAs are based on data for Jul-Aug-Sep only.
Wrong by 180 degrees. BLS explicitly DENIES that the CPI is a cost-of-living index, pointing out that conceptual and definitional issues make construction of such an index all but impossible in any case. The CPI is and always has been a price index with respect to a basket of goods that evolves along with evolving patterns of household consumption. John Williams meanwhile is a publicity seeking troll and his website is completely worthless. No serious person pays any attention to it.
LOL! You are one tiny little person stuck off in one tiny little corner of Texas. Even if your personal witness could be trusted -- and it plainly can't -- that testimony would pale in comparison to the data collected by thousands of analysts taking the prices of thousands of goods at thousands of locations all across the country, then running all that data through exhaustive analytical and computational methodologies developed by the best subject matter experts available in this country and around the world. None of whom is John Williams. Or Tyler Durden either for that matter. The level of absolute bunk that sociophobes will swallow can be and often is simply staggering.
While the BLS is not a true COL index they state they changed their methodology towards that direction.
I'm not asking anyone to trust my personal interest. I'm not asking anyone to do anything.
I use Williams numbers as a gauge for my investment growth targets. Wouldn't it be better to err on the side of having too much money then not enough ?
And who are you to tell me that I'm wrong to follow those numbers ?.
Is the Consumer Price Index (CPI) a cost-of-living index?
Since January 1999, a geometric mean formula has been used to calculate most basic indexes within the CPI; in other words, the prices within most item categories (e.g., apples) are averaged using a geometric mean formula. This improvement moves the CPI somewhat closer to a cost-of-living measure, as the geometric mean formula allows for a modest amount of consumer substitution as relative prices within item categories change.
"A COLA effective for December of the current year is equal to the percentage increase (if any) in the average CPI-W for the third quarter of the current year over the average for the third quarter of the last year in which a COLA became effective. If there is an increase, it must be rounded to the nearest tenth of one percent. If there is no increase, or if the rounded increase is zero, there is no COLA." Latest Cost-of-Living Adjustment
If you'd like to speculate given the above info, I'm all for it.
Thanks Lenora. Based on your information, and my extrapolation, there will be 0.5% COLA increase.
Calculation would be to add -0.1 + 0.7 + 1.0 divided by 3 = 0.5%. On $1000 that would be $5/month, and on $2000 that would be $10/month, before the Part B premium increase of course.
The basic point is that because the third quarter of 2014 was heavy on price declines, a third quarter of 2015 with just standard sized price increases could generate a small COLA.
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